Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hi everyone. I've recorded today's podcast before the Coronavirus Pandemic, but I think it's still a really timely conversation. This interview that I'm sharing today is a conversation that I had with Dr. Dan Engel, who is a psychiatrist and neurologist, and someone who is at the forefront of the emerging science, looking at plant-based medicines and psychedelics and their effectiveness for treating all kinds of mental health challenges. So for some of you, this may seem like a fringe conversation, but I think you'll hear in Dr. Engel, someone who is a very thoughtful scientist and who is really trying to think differently about strategies for healing our bodies and our minds. This is a, a field that I have been following as a professional for a number of years, and Dr. Dan is incredibly well respected and wise, and I think we'll see as the long-term effects of this crisis begin to settle in, that all of us are in need of mental healthcare in ways that maybe we just haven't been before.
Speaker 0 00:01:10 And there's not going to be one thing that's right for everyone as we pursue our own healing and wholeness. As a clinician and as a scientist, I'm hopeful that there will be more options as the science of plant-based medicine and psychedelics begins to come more and more into the mainstream. So thanks for listening and I, I hope you learn something. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, you can follow Dan's work at Dr. Dan Engel, that's E N G L e.com, or reach out to me and I'll be happy to point you in the direction of some reputable resources. Thanks so much for listening. Be well. Welcome to the Zen Founder Podcast. This is a place where we have conversations about mental health and entrepreneurship. We have a pretty broad conceptualization of what mental health means, sometimes depression, anxiety, sometimes relationships, or physical health. The goal here is to bring some calm into the crazy rollercoaster of ups and downs that is life for many entrepreneurs. I'm your host. I'm Dr. Sherry Walling. I'm a clinical psychologist and an entrepreneur, married to an entrepreneur, live in the world of entrepreneurs, and I'm so pleased that you have joined us for this conversation.
Speaker 0 00:02:31 You know, so Dan, one of the things that we share, well, there's a couple things. Both being healers and people who help take care of others, maybe healer is a strong term, but people who seek to support people along their healing journey is that we've both, you know, lost a sibling, uh, to suicide, which I think has really, for me, reshaped a lot of how I see my work and do my work. And I know for you was really a moment in which you began to think about mental health and mental healthcare quite differently than maybe you did before. Would you speak to a little bit of how that experience of losing your sister sort of reshaped you as a physician?
Speaker 2 00:03:12 Yeah, yeah. Happy to speak about that and thanks for asking. I remember when you and I had our first drop in conversation together, that that was a, a high point that we really shared and, and could witness and, uh, reflect in each other. And they are hard moments, especially when they're so sudden and we didn't see it coming. And I was a physician prior to my sister passing away and transcending and I was still doing most of my work underground. So I had already gotten certified and board certified as as a physician and psychiatry and neurology had run a couple of centers over a few years and already been down to the jungle, lived in a jungle for a year studying medicine work, and was back in the states for about three years. So that whole thing, all my medical training and, and all my shamanic based initiative practices and that time down south was probably 10 years prior to Trudy dying.
Speaker 2 00:04:16 And I was living in Sedona. I was pretty cruisey. I had a small little practice. I was medically advising a few different centers. Yeah, pretty just chill and kind of making my own schedule and not working too hard and having a pretty, uh, monastic life. I was really still underground and didn't tell many people about my experiences or study with ayahuasca. And then she died really suddenly. She had had a, a lifelong experience with depression, anxiety, and alcohol and was sober for 14 months and then we're not exactly sure why, but uh, one night got a bottle of wine and shot herself and that was it. And we were really just devastated as a family. And the more I sat with it and let it inform me, then I realized it was time to no longer play safe and stay underground and just do my thing really.
Speaker 2 00:05:13 Um, quietly it was time for me to come up onto the radar, so to speak, and onto the stage and be an advocate and an ally for the right use of the psychedelic medicine tools as it relates to a culture in crisis and a medical industry that's broken. And it's a strong testament. I mean, those are strong statements by themselves, but it's a strong testament that we are in epidemic levels of increasing experience culturally and globally in depression, anxiety, P T S D, addiction and pain, those are the five primary epidemics. And even in the advent of all of our fancy psycho-pharmacology, those numbers are still increasing. So the medical system needs to be revamped in some ways evolved. Maybe it might be a more accurate description cuz every, everything's always evolving. So what is the right use and the appropriate inclusion of these medicines in a good way?
Speaker 2 00:06:12 And the second half of that story, and I, when I tell this story to groups, I call it the Tale of Two Sisters cuz this is one story of my sister Trudy, who's older than me and has passed away. And also the story of my little sister Megan, who is, uh, younger than I by about 16 years. And she was going on the same road, anxiety, depression, and alcohol. She got kicked out of high school because she kept bringing alcohol to school and my parents had tried everything. And it was also a testament when my dad said, you know, I don't know what you're doing down in the jungle, but it seems to have worked for you <laugh>, because I just told him I was studying herbs. And, um, he said, we've tried everything for your little sister and it seems like she's going down the same road, so can you help her?
Speaker 2 00:06:57 So I took my little sister down and she experienced Ayahuasca and Wachuma, which is also known as San Petro Cactus, and had a massive healing experience over the course of about a year and a half, and now is six, no, her husband is eight years sober, she's three years sober. And the reason I say that's the tale of two Sisters is because my older sister, Trudy, older, about eight years is the product of a generation where psychedelic medical research was in the shadows and really dormant and essentially put on hold and paused by the federal government. And my little sister is the product of the next generation where the research is now on board again, and there's a lot of excitement in the field again. And because they span about 30 years or so, there's a generational gap is really notable for an entire generation of Americans and the world who didn't have access to these tools because our government was too threatened by their inclusion into cultural use and medical mainstream.
Speaker 2 00:08:00 And maybe we weren't ready, you know, the sixties were really revolutionary period, and people weren't doing or working with these medicines in a mindful way on a large scale. So it's not necessarily a make wrong against the government, but it is a make wrong right now that there's such slow development in legalization therapeutically of these medicines because people are dying consistently with, without access to very effective treatments that are good for arresting the progression of these kinds of psychiatric epidemics. So that essentially is a summary of why I feel compelled to share the work that I'm here to do so that more people like my little sister can have access.
Speaker 0 00:08:47 And it was, it was Trudy's death that really was the catalyst for you to start being more of an advocate to start speaking, to start being more active in the research world in order to bring these medicines into sort of wider awareness and adoption.
Speaker 2 00:09:03 Yeah. Prior to that I was, I was just doing my own work and going down south quite a bit and still doing ditta with my teachers down there. But the advocacy and clinical work that I was doing was, was not at all related to psychedelic research. It was more integrative, psychiatry, integrative spirituality, detoxification, helping people get off of medications, which is all good work. And the advocacy work with medicine came and was promoted through her passing. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:09:32 So for someone who is listening who is maybe sort of read a few Twitter postings or retweets with articles related to, you know, our magic mushrooms, the cure for depression or something like that, somebody who's just really not sure what we're talking about when we talk about psychedelic medication or plant-based medicine or there's several different terms that people use. What's the, what's the big picture of what you do or what you mean when you talk about, um, psychedelic medicine?
Speaker 2 00:10:03 Yeah, I think we're in the exciting growing field of what I call transformational medicine. We're on the leaning, the leading edge. The slingshot is in the pulled position <laugh>. And if we think about it historically, as mentioned before, everything's evolutionary. We're all growing individually, collectively, culturally, and all of our institutions are ideally evolving, including the medical industry and the medical institution. And we've seen that allopathic medicine has dominated the landscape over the last a hundred years, plus or minus maybe 80 to a hundred years. And allopathic medicine is essentially western MD medicine and to the exclusion and making wrong historically, many of the other disciplines, chiropractic medicine, naturopathic medicine, eastern medicine, energetic medicine, homeopathic medicine, herbal medicine, the allopathic medical mainstream has actively lobbied against those other fields for quite some time up until about 20 years ago. And then integrative medicine became more of a term that turned into functional medicine, which is the description of using a bit more sophisticated diagnostics to understand the cause of the factors of physiologic conditions like the body and the brain.
Speaker 2 00:11:22 And yet it's still fairly reductionistic. It doesn't really take into consideration an inclusive model that looks at the body, the mind, the heart, and the soul, all aspects of self. And as now we're reclaiming the excitement of psychedelic medicines and psychedelic medical research and discussing their right inclusion into the medical architecture, we are gonna continue to see this field grow in transformational medicine. And transformational medicine is essentially the cultivation of the integrative and functional medicine approaches as well as mind body understanding. And that, that gets into all kinds of quantum physics. And we won't necessarily go on that rabbit hole, but all of that included into a framework where medicine, psychedelic medicines are available at registered facilities with trained providers to be able to go through an arc of an experience that is a transformational process.
Speaker 0 00:12:21 And do you see that as the sort of older school western medicine philosophy of like, show me the symptoms, show me the problem and I'll find a tool that will help that problem? Or are you seeing that instead of, or in addition to the use of psychedelic medication to really enhance wellbeing? I think when we talk about transformational medicine, it, it sounds so much more than, Hey, I have this diagnosis and I need a cure.
Speaker 2 00:12:47 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I see it as both. Yeah. Because what we do know about these medicines is that they're extraordinarily good for healing the psychological fractures that happen through trauma and disconnected experiences of living disconnected from myself, my relationships, my community, my experience with divinity, the planet, most of our chronic diseases are some degree of an extension from the experience of disconnection. And we know that these medicines are very good at reconnecting us with most, if not all of the different aspects of ourselves, particularly our shadow material and reconnecting us more in peaceful awareness and engaged cooperative systems around our family dynamics, our community dynamics, our societal dynamics and the cooperative systems are the ones that are sustainable, not competitive. If you look at nature, that's just consistent. So the medicines are really good at healing those psychological wounds as well as helping people go from good to great if they're in the optimization arena and <laugh> walking around what's with what's usually described as the worried well or the general neurosis of being a human.
Speaker 2 00:14:06 And so we have the doorways of optimization and healing, which is a phenomenal recognition just as the fundamental aspects of life are good for solidifying, healing and working towards optimization, right? Like food, water, sunlight, movement, joy and play, creative expression, empowerment based living, those aspects are just fundamental to life. And if they're absent in a disease model, they have to be restored first. Otherwise you're just gonna get reliant on some kind of outside agency, some other outside influence like a pharmaceutical. If somebody has chronic inflammation because they're eating crappy and they're not moving enough, but they're trying to correct that with medications, it's not, it's gonna work. So we have to re solidify the, the solid foundation of what it means to be an intact whole and awake in-service human. And we know that these medicines help all aspects of being. It's not to say that everybody's ready for medicine trip or that the medicine is a panacea either, right? Because in my experience, these medicines help us recognize our truth. It's still our work to do in the integration, which is to take that truth or that peak experience and make it applicable to our daily life.
Speaker 0 00:15:21 What's happening on a, on a neurological level that allows these medicines to be so powerfully transformative why these medicines are not, you know, traditional pharmaceuticals?
Speaker 2 00:15:33 Oh wow, that's a really good question. Well, if we take the larger landscape of how all these medicines are working, that would be a really exhaustive conversation because, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:15:42 Let's pick one <laugh>, psilocybin <laugh>, many
Speaker 2 00:15:45 Of 'em work a little bit different. But if we take a general summation, and one of the example medicines that's becoming more and more widely talked about, appreciated and promoted even legalization by the feds slowly is M D M A, which is the primary pure constituent in what would be described as street ecstasy. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and ecstasy off the street is usually cut with a bunch of other crap, including amphetamines and speed and who else knows what. So it's not clean product. And when you look at MDM A is a pure molecule, it's data is amazing, 67 to 83%, those are, are some of the different studies. So let's split the difference and call it close to 75%, 75% cure rate for chronic severe P T S D. That's not, that's not a symptom reduction rate, that's a cure rate. 75% cure rate for chronic severe P T S D after two to three sessions.
Speaker 2 00:16:44 And if you look at that versus the standard of care for chronic severe P T S D, which is psycho-pharmacology using some degree of, of pharmaceutical ME medication prescription and cognitive behavioral therapy, that standard of care is somewhere around 30 to 40% improvement rate. So you're talking about orders and that's, again, that's only improvement rate. That means symptom reduction, not cure. So you're talking about orders of magnitude improvement. When people go through M D M A supportive psychotherapy, two to three sessions, three fourths after that process will no longer even meet criteria for P T S D. And we know that there are 20 to 40 veterans in the United States alone committing suicide every day from a combination of P T S D, depression, chronic pain, anxiety, et cetera. So that's a phenomenal data point and that's what really promoted the feds to greenlight its therapy as a breakthrough treatment for chronic severe PTs.
Speaker 2 00:17:40 So MDM A is slowly getting rolled out now through what's called expanded access through the MAPS organization. And unfortunately it's happening pretty slow, but fortunately the feds are still moving it forward and they're becoming comfortable with how this is being INS implemented. How M D M A works come back to your question, is phenomenal. I, I think it would be hard to script from a human perspective, a better treatment for P T S D cuz M D M A was not scripted as a PTSD treatment. It was kind of found to be such, because it's notable for how it works. And, and the way it works is this three primary things, it relaxes the fear center called the amygdala. So it takes somebody out of briefly and transiently out of the fight or flight position, and somebody with chronic severe P ts d who has post-traumatic stress disorder is chronically engaged in a stuck fight or flight system, their neurology is stuck in sympathetic overdrive.
Speaker 2 00:18:41 So it relaxes that fear center while it number two, increases the perfusion and blood flow to the brief frontal cortex, which is this area right behind our forehead. And that's one of the, the most evolutionarily new areas of the brain, right? We kind of moved our evolutionary capacity from the brain stem and, and the, the primary cortex, which is called the reptilian brain into the mammalian structures, which is the limbic system and the feeling brain. Now we as humans are graced with this big frontal cortex and that allows for ego observation, skill in planning and problem solving skill in communication. And these consciously based cooperative systems, there's so many different ways that, that we have a more advanced brain. But, you know, <laugh>, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're intelligent because we continue to make decisions as a group against our survival. But that's another part of the conversation, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:19:42 So it's number two, it, it improves blood flow to the front of the brain and that allows for a better witnessing perspective. So to see things more objectively. And then number three, it improves connection between the hippocampus, which is the area of memory and that prefrontal cortex. So now we have a better, more inclusive memory of all the events, all the factors that led up to this big trauma or this lower intensity, but longer standing series of traumas, which is more called complex P T S D, like if there was neglect as a child, not necessarily overt trauma, but neglect will set up the same kind of psychological cascade. So it does all three of those things and it's really, it would be really hard to just script a better molecule because you have, you have better witness, better memory, and less fear. So in that experience now you're, you're less armored, less defensive, more curious, and more able to get into the material in order to better understand it, learn from it, heal it, and integrate it. This is not about suppressing symptoms, this is about allowing our psychological landscape to become more intimate with the conscious connection of that trauma which our ego defenses have really sophisticatedly tried to block us or save us from. So it's actually bringing things to the surface versus psycho-pharmacology and pharmaceuticals tend to keep things below the surface as a means to suppress the symptoms that are really severe and uncomfortable.
Speaker 0 00:21:23 Can you say something about the presence of another human in going through a, a medicine journey like this? So, you know, I think sometimes people hear about the, the power of something like M D M A or psilocybin and, and think, oh I, I know a guy who can get the thing and <laugh>, that's like my least favorite idea ever. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:21:47 <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:21:48 What's the deal with the therapy piece? Like why, why do this with someone? Why do you need a babysitter?
Speaker 2 00:21:54 Yeah, it's a great question and it, it should be stated and clarified if I didn't already mention that. So I'm glad you're bringing it up that the data for M D M A therapy is as a psychotherapeutic process. It's not just giving people M D M A and leaving them on their own devices and then it just works its magic and they're magically healed. That's a psychotherapeutic process. So you have people in the midst of experiencing M D M A who, people who have chronic severe ptsd and it's a four to six hour process and they're with their therapists every step of the way, or I should say the other way around. Their therapist is with them every step of the way. And that therapeutic process also includes three sessions. And this is the classic maps protocol that's being rolled out by the, the US government right now.
Speaker 2 00:22:44 There's three sessions as a preparation. There are three sessions between each of the three psychotherapeutic M D M A sessions themselves, both as integration and as preparation for the next one. And then there's three sessions, these are psychotherapy sessions after the very last one. So you have 12 to 15 or so psychotherapeutic sessions just around the medicine work itself. And then then the medicine work itself, to speak even more directly to your point is the recognition that in the arena of somebody that we feel safe with and connected to that process also helps us de armor and become more vulnerable to know that we have support in facing our demons and facing our shadows and facing the trauma and facing that which is uncomfortable. And it's very much true that yes, as Joseph Campbell said in that cave that you fear lies the treasures that you seek.
Speaker 2 00:23:51 Yes, that's true. And also, if we are in uncharted territory, the last thing you wanna do is re-traumatize people. And it can happen where if somebody gets stuck in a trauma loop and they're in the midst of being healed through that trauma pattern, but they're not orchestrated and guided through that process, then they can get stuck and re-traumatized. Like if anybody hiking a new trail up to the top of a mountain, they're much more likely to go with training with the right equipment and go with a guide. Somebody that knows that landscape that can tell them, oh yeah, you might see this on the map that the fork that goes to the left, but you should know that that like leads to quicksand, <laugh> or the bridge is out or that's another double the amount of time and energy. This is a much more easy, efficient, effective way to get up to that top of the mountain.
Speaker 2 00:24:51 And so the therapeutic process is vital. And the difference between a therapist slash facilitator and a sitter is that a sitter will essentially help hold the, the container of safety. And if there's like a really rocky thing that happens, then you just know that somebody's there that can make sure that no one's gonna barge in, make sure that the safety is gonna be maintained. Make sure that if I need some water <laugh>, I've got some, if I need help to the bathroom, I've got it. That person's essentially working as an auxiliary experience of safety in the environment. Now, as a facilitator or as a therapist, there's an extra degree or several orders of magnitude greater understanding and wisdom in how to support the person going through their, their deep experience to the greatest potential for success. And there's a lot of different ways that the psychotherapeutic experience can be woven into the medicine space.
Speaker 2 00:25:59 Like for example, the two primary therapists that started the phase one trials way back with M D M A supported psychotherapy and got the first 83% data point cure rate that everybody was just blown away by are a couple named Michael and Annie Mytho. And they use internal family systems I F S as their therapeutic modality and they're genius at it to watch them perform that is, you're watching Usain Bolt run the a hundred yard dash, it's like really poetry and motion <laugh> masters. Yeah, yeah, they're really good. And other people like Peter Levine's work is based in more somatic experiencing. Both are very good at helping to relieve trauma. You just use a different style. Some people might use hocon or a body-based psychotherapy. So there's a bunch of different ways you can weave it in. The ideal is that whatever person in whatever system they're using is trauma informed and they're really good at doing it. If those two things are in place, then there's a extraordinarily high chance for success. And it's really notable that the human aspect is still in many ways the most important part because we are born to bond as our primary drive. You give infants the choice between love or food, they will choose love and in the absence of love they will wither away. And the psychotherapeutic process when coupled with medicine work, I think now you've got the best exponential chance for success.
Speaker 0 00:27:47 So for people who are, who are listening to this and thinking that they would like to try it or that they have a family member who would really benefit, you know, we're still working in a phase when these therapeutic practices are really hard to access. They're not, they're not fully legal yet, you know, they're not sort of widely available. What kind of advice or guidance do you offer people who are like, Hey, I'm sort of stuck, I I have to wait or what do I do?
Speaker 2 00:28:13 Yeah, it's uh, another good question. I get that one a lot because when you look at the data or you, you hear somebody speak on it who's relatively informed, then it sounds so promising and it's also a reflection of the fact that there's a huge need for this kind of work. So in answering that question, I tend to say, well there are multiple levels of experience in the medicine arena and if we use that in a hierarchy, which essentially just means a sacred order, there are level one medicines, level two medicines and level three medicines. Level one medicines are a little bit easier to enter the stream to navigate, to have the higher likelihood for a positive experience straight out of the gate. And a a really informed sitter can oftentimes be enough. Ideally you have a therapist who's supporting it, but you don't necessarily need to have somebody really skilled for decades in the shamonic arts.
Speaker 2 00:29:13 And so I'll describe a little bit about what that means. So phase or level one is M D M A, low dose L S D, psilocybin cannabis, ketamine, cannabis and ketamine being the two that are legal now in most demographics are in most areas of the country. M D M A and psilocybin are gonna become legal in the next 12 to 18 months, likely because they're both in phase three trials right now. And L S D is the most studied psychedelic on the planet. There are something like 40 plus thousand case reports of benefit and unfortunately it just became the pariah of the counterculture beat down by the Nixon administration when everything went in schedule one L S D was just running, running through the, uh, the river stream so to speak, or the waterways and it was freaking everybody out from an administration level.
Speaker 2 00:30:02 But from the scientific community in the fifties, sixties and seventies, people were super excited about L S D because it was so powerful. Nobody had ever seen a molecule, a synthesized molecule on the planet like that. So it was essentially open sourced the, the data pool like Sandos Labs, when they found it, they're like, whoa, this is pretty freaking amazing. We don't know how it works, but we want people to help us find out. So anybody who wants to study it <laugh> right to us and will give you a free stuff. And so that's why I got 40,000 different case reports. So that's level one. Level twos, ayahuasca, San Pedro, cactus peyote, San Pedro, awesome. Uh, has another name, Wachuma. Those are masculine based cactus peyote in North America, San Pedro in South America. And then Ayahuasca, which has really caught a lot of people's attention and is a Amazon river basin medicine that translates into the vine of the soul also is to the vine of death usually because going into that cave, like we said in that cave that you fear lies the treasure you seek when we get into our shadow material and work through our fears and oftentimes we become more powerful what we thought possible.
Speaker 2 00:31:08 So those are level two. Level three is iboga and iga, Igan being the primary constituent in Iboga and D M T. So just to put a landscape out there, like a broad spectrum, those are 10 of the most studied medicines right now. If people ask, okay, I'd like to have an experience, I've never had anything, what do you recommend? And where should I go? Then I tend to be pretty judicious because of the legal landscape and the fact that these are really powerful tools. So you have to know that who you're gonna be sitting with knows what the heck they're doing and they can also know and appreciate the fact that again, there are contraindications, not everybody's ready to have an experience. And it's important to have a three phased approach where you help people prepare really well, then the experience itself is orchestrated and facilitated to a level of excellence and then you help people integrate really well. So preparation, experience, and integration, if people wanna have an experience, I say, well part of the preparation should be for anybody is have a meditation practice or something that helps you get quiet and starts to pay attention to your thoughts.
Speaker 0 00:32:13 Some capacity for introspection and reflection.
Speaker 2 00:32:16 Right? Exactly. And one really good practice for that is flotation therapy, cuz floating, which is also called restricted environment stimulation therapy or rest flotation therapy's been around 30, 40 years in a, a sizable, almost queen size bed float pod. You can float in a, in a pool of Epson salts. So you're buoyant and it's pitch black, no sight, no sound, no gravity, no appropriate except so most of what the brain's tracking gets to go quiet. And then we get to pay attention to what's behind the curtain, so to speak. It gets to start paying attention to our mindstream and we can work on our self-regulation practices, breathing strategies, how we work with our minds to calm it down. If a person doesn't have any kind of reference point or any kind of practice in that first, then they have a much higher chance of freaking out in a medicine space, which is not we wanna have happen. You
Speaker 0 00:33:17 Wanna have some, some ability to be comfortable in navigating your own interiority.
Speaker 2 00:33:23 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And and that's also gonna help people integrate because integration's not usually that comfortable.
Speaker 0 00:33:32 Yeah. What does that word mean to you? I mean, I, when you talk about the integrative process involved with medicine work, what does that involve?
Speaker 2 00:33:40 Yeah, I think of it in two ways cuz when these practices are held well, when these medicine experiences are facilitated, well we tend to become more integrated as a whole human, which means we're more aware of what was in the subconscious that we may have been actively repressing or trying to keep stuck away in the closet. All of our guilt, fear, shame, doubt, insecurity, self-loathing, self-criticism, all of the, the intensity that can come with being a human at any point and is especially prevalent in the way that we live today with all of this externalized value system and trying to chase some degree of internal success so that we can feel good and worthy of receiving the love that everybody deserves. And so when we can become more intimate with that shadow material, intimate with all aspects, all parts of ourself, we become integrated as a more whole human, I would describe that also as a full spectrum human.
Speaker 2 00:34:44 And it doesn't mean that it's all rainbows and butterflies. If I wanna open up my heart to enable me to love more and receive more love in, I don't get to just self-select my heart's not semi-permeable. When the membrane where I can just let love in <laugh> and not the grief and not the pain, it means I'm gonna open up my heart, it's gonna be opening up to everything. And now I get to be a more full spectrum human because the, all of those emotions are valid, all parts of ourself are valid, everybody is valid, everybody's important, everybody's awesome, everybody's magnificent. This being human is an incredible dynamic at times. Really uncomfortable but pretty magical process. And so the integrative process is both about becoming a whole human as well as integrating the peak experiences that oftentimes come, the transformational transcendent transpersonal experiences that happen and integrating that and making it usable for the day-to-day so that we can integrate and essentially span the peak experience or the, the magic of that kind of medicine work. And medicine by the way, is not the only way to experience a transpersonal process, but to be able to integrate the magic of that with the mundane of the day today Jack Cornfield has this great book called After The Ecstasy, the Laundry <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:36:19 Yes.
Speaker 2 00:36:19 <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:36:21 The rest of Life. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:36:22 It's so, well, I mean, you know, it's all in the title and it's very much integrating those two experiences
Speaker 0 00:36:30 As you watch the landscape change and watch the f d A process unfold and, and this hopefully legalization and broader adaptation of things like M D M A and psilocybin, like I'm a little bit worried myself and I'm curious about this for you. Like now that these medicines potentially become more integrated into the larger medical establishment, what does that mean or how does that change the, the posture from which they have traditionally been used, which is with some level of kind of spiritual sensitivity or just a little bit of a different tone than maybe the medical community usually embraces new, uh, new and emerging treatment therapies?
Speaker 2 00:37:18 Yeah, it's a, it's a wonderful question and I think of a couple of things as you ask it. One is the concern about the commodification of the, these fancy medicines and new even potentially available novel molecules that the pharmaceutical industry is gonna be very keen and curious to explore and promote. Like for example, s ketamine, ketamine has been legal for 30, 40 years and now there's this patent on s ketamine, which is a, is like half the ketamine usual framework just to keep it simple. But it's a daily nasal spray and, and it works very different than if you gave somebody a, a, a therapeutic flood dose of ketamine. Like how it works in the system is very different. So as a result, I think we're going to continue to see the pharmaceutical industry try and marginalize their patent up the decision tree of federal implementation. And what I mean is like they're, they're gonna say these, these medicines are safe, we have patents on these, we know how these work. All these others are not safe. So we don't want to have those work, we don't want to have those available. And now you've just kept it in a corporate capitalistic profit-based system and that is just by itself part of the whole problem.
Speaker 0 00:38:45 Right? Always works well for medicine, right,
Speaker 2 00:38:48 <laugh>, right? You know, the old days the doctors would get paid when they kept their clients, well they wouldn't get paid if their clients were sick. Wouldn't that just be a phenomenally different medical system?
Speaker 0 00:39:00 I'm a fan
Speaker 2 00:39:00 <laugh>. So number one I think about that like, like the commodification piece of it. And number two is what you're describing too, more of the spiritual landscape for how these medicines, particularly the natural medicines that have been with us for thousands and thousands of years, psilocybin, psilocybin goes back a million years in the fossil records. It's likely what supported us in promoting the doubling of our brain size in a very small period of time when we went from homo erectus to homo sapiens about two to 300,000 years ago. And that is the stone date theory and hypothesis that's been promoted by heavies like Terrence McKenna and uh, Paul Samitz. So if we look at these traditional cultures and most cultures have an expression of transcendent and altered states plugged into their practices, most also will use some degree of medicine as a, as a part of that.
Speaker 2 00:39:56 Not all cultures use psychedelic medicines, but most intact traditional cultures do. And many of these are so far back that they don't have a written history that's more oral tradition. So some of this two yes is speculative, but there's a host of really compelling data to suggest that most intact cultures do work with and have worked with psychedelic medicines in these reverent positions of humanity, which are rights of passage ceremonies like going from one stage of development to another in healing trauma or illness and in the natural promotion of appreciating the benefit that happens as a human when we experience ecstatic states. So you don't have to be quote unquote broken or going to fix something to have a positive experience happen because ecstasy or an ecstatic experience by itself is feels really good. And oh by the way, it's phenomenal healing happens, body, mind, heart and soul, ecstatic experiences heal all of those four levels and optimize all four of those levels.
Speaker 2 00:41:06 So as we start to potentially plug in a sacred medicine practice into a capitalistic medical system, you're likely going to lose a lot of the magic. And ideally we get ahead of that conversation and this is part of what we're doing at Kuya, which is our center in Austin that goes live this summer, which is an institute for transformational medicine as much of a clinical invitation and availability. It's a educational center and research institute cuz I, so much of what we see as the healthiest expression of a medical system is not only one in which that system will give a person a fish so to speak, but teach that person how to fish. Or not only do we give persons the healing and available architecture for coming to terms with something that was uncomfortable, that they weren't able to heal on their own. We're also educating them on how to live a more full spectrum life in a more empowered based system where they're feeling a part of a community, they're taking care of the foundational aspects of what it means to live with vitality and optimism as well as training mindset states around resilience and empowerment.
Speaker 2 00:42:25 So there's so much of the educational arena in there and that's what I think we have the opportunity to do as this whole new wave of transformational medicine happens is demand that the excellence is maintained even as these medicines start to reach the mainstream because we don't have enough therapists trained using these modalities to even meet the need in the collective for this kind of work. So is there gonna be a parallel path? The medicines are gonna be continued to be made available or at least decriminalized. And a lot of cities and communities nationwide right now are going for decriminalization measures and ballot initiatives so that at minimum we're not putting people in jail for exploring their right to as a human be connected to what nature provides. And it's also my belief that we have as a right to being a human, we should have say over how we explore transpersonal states.
Speaker 2 00:43:33 Ideally we do that with safety, with education, with mindfulness, and with everything in the environment that's needed to make sure that success happens and no more trauma or injury happens. Cuz as mentioned, not everybody's ready to have an experience or even safe to have an experience, but this is the educational model that we get to bring into the collective infused into the system and demand that as these medicines are rolled out, that we're still holding them to a degree of excellence. And working in this space is not profit driven as a primary interest. Yes, it is a profitable industry and understandably that may in a particular business model be a secondary or a tertiary priority, but it should never be the primary priority.
Speaker 0 00:44:25 You commented earlier, just by way of contrast, that people in the sixties were not necessarily using, I mean broad generalization, but there wasn't, there wasn't necessarily a mindful presence and mindful exploration. At least that's how it got encoded in the the history books. What do you think is different now or now that we kind of have another shot at this culturally, what are you hopeful for?
Speaker 2 00:44:52 Who was it? There was the, the head of the RCA record label who at one point had Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis on his, I mean these are, these are the, these are the heavies in the industry at the time, at the forefront of the, the musical kind of revolution that was happening in the fifties and sixties. And it was really similar. He was, he was fond of saying, you gotta get it wrong before you can get it right or we have to just be able to have a learning experience and then grow from that. So I think we learned in the sixties that everybody, well, you know, cancer clear, but a whole lot of people working in transformational states in parallel in a group experience might be the recipe for a lot of chaos if there's not parameters and mindfulness about how to orchestrate that and, and facilitate in that and, and produce that well, so to speak.
Speaker 2 00:45:42 And so if we learned from that, wonderful, and I think there's gonna be learning that goes through this next stage, and I think the feds and the maps organization are being mindful about it. They don't want to screw this up again and set us back another 10 or 20 years. So how do we do it mindfully and with care and appreciate that most of the time people just need context and education. The the two biggest things that most, I think it's 90% by the end of their senior year in high school, 90% of high school students would've explored drugs and explored sex. And yet those are the two things that at least when I was in high school, were never talked about. <laugh> is probably talked a a little bit more now, but we tend to still repress these, these natural inclinations for us to explore our consciousness and for us to explore our sexuality.
Speaker 2 00:46:47 And it, it's, it's even a touchier conversation when you start talking about exploring sexuality and exploring consciousness in the same conversation, right? And so medicine work, and that's where you actually hear a lot of people, well they're actually more and more particularly women talking about being abused in the midst of a medicine experience. And it's horrible. And the classic description is like, oh, I went down to the Amazon to have an ayahuasca experience and the the shaman abused me. And one of the reasons that that has been not an isolated event, it, it's by no means the majority, but it has happened extensively, is that the Shamonic path historically is a power path path. It's not a spiritual path. And so it's up to us to infuse our spirituality, our mindfulness, our reverence with those practices and interweave something that feels really supportive and in harmony to life and in harmony to healing and in respect to people along their stage of development in whatever aspect they are in, in healing their own inner experience.
Speaker 2 00:47:56 And I think we are going through that at a collective level, at a cultural level. We're going through our own evolution and coming to greater experiences of at least calling into question, are we living well as a collective and as a culture, are we living sustainably? Are we living in harmony? Yes, there's more opportunity to do that because there's less war feminine pestilence than there's ever been, but I still think we can do better. And these are like the, the podcast and the way you ask your questions and, and how you're sharing this information is a great example of the fact that we have available to us information that many of our ancestors, our mother, our our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents didn't have access to this kind of information and oftentimes didn't have access to these kinds of medicines. So I think it's happening at a really dynamic time and many of the people in charge now actually had experiences when they were younger, which is another benefit.
Speaker 0 00:48:59 <laugh> the sixties happened, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:49:00 Yeah, it wasn't that bad. I I'm still relatively intact and oh, by the way, maybe it was actually even good in healing. So you're telling me that this thing that I tripped out on that was just so fun or maybe a little chaotic, you're telling me that too is, has healing potential. Wow, tell me more. So I think the administration of today is different from the administration in the early seventies at least to their level of experience. So now there's possibly, I think it's quite likely a little bit more curious or available audience making decisions to allow these medicines to become explored with legal framework.
Speaker 0 00:49:42 And I'm, I'm so grateful to you as someone who has sort of led to this conversation about very mindful, intentional, you know, therapeutic use of these medicines and I think your, your personal experience and your educational training and you sort of have all of these pieces that have made you such a lovely leader in this community and you know, I'm glad that you decided to come out of the monastery, so to speak.
Speaker 2 00:50:12 Yeah, thank you. Me too. <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:50:15 So I know we need to wrap up and I'm so grateful for the hour of your time, but I just, last question, tell me a little bit about what you're scheming up in Austin. You said it's called Kuya and that's the new center that you're working on?
Speaker 2 00:50:29 Yes, Kuya. It was just a recognition that ultimately at the end of the day, either through healing or optimization, we're all desiring to experience more of that in our lives, particularly self-love and what does it look like to build a transformational medicine center and institute with certain values around inclusivity and interconnectivity and rescuing and welcoming all parts of ourself and, and creating a sacred container, so to speak, where everything is welcome. It's one of my favorite terms in the Lakota language <unk> which means everything is sacred and everything is is welcome here. And when people feel that degree of safety and connection, magic starts to happen, we get reclaimed and reconnected to our blueprint of humanity, which is as a cooperative species, which is heart open and heart-centered and reverently connected to everybody around us and all our relationships as well as being mindful to the generations to come.
Speaker 2 00:51:34 So that, that's just a little bit of the narrative of what we're creating at, at Kuya, which is a therapeutic arena that creates the best experience and potential for people to go through a healing process in order to become transformed, transformed into their best version of themselves and empowered and supported to do their best work in the world, to shine their light, sing their song, and offer what is and offer to the world, what is unique to them that has never been and will never be. That's just what's unique to them. And we infuse that with, uh, blending of hardware technologies and software technologies, which is brain and body technologies, physiology with psychology. And we can also think about that as well. When you, if you have a computer, you wanna uplevel the software and the hardware in order to peak performance. And so when we can bring hardware technologies like neuromodulation IV therapeutics, physiological up regulators like hydrotherapy and, and even cold water exposure and heat exposure to these extreme temperature therapies, these are some of the longest standing practices that have more and more legitimate data for supporting longevity that we're just reclaiming of more modern day interpretation and use of those practices that our ancestors have been using for thousands of years.
Speaker 2 00:53:00 And how do we infuse those technologies with these medicine tools and the psychological landscape and things that are catalysts for consciousness. So when we can up-level physiology and up-level psychology simultaneously, then in a fairly short period of time you have people with a new experience of living, a new experience of themself, a new experience of being inspired by life holding, life as sacred and magical and, and seeing themself as important as every other human walking around and as and as necessary in the tapestry. Like everybody that's here on the planet is needed on the planet right now, <laugh>. And so how do we create more of a community experience in optimal living?
Speaker 0 00:53:44 And if people want to learn more about what you're doing or follow Kuya as it's developing, what's the best way for them to, you know, connect with you in your work?
Speaker 2 00:53:53 Yeah, that's a another great question. Thanks for asking. The um, kuya website and platform is gonna go live in probably around April. They can certainly stay informed of that through my websites, dr dan engle.com, d r d a n e n g l e.com, full spectrum medicine.com. Those will be the easiest, uh, entry points that will keep all of the information up and current and then pointing people in the right direction for that. And it's also gonna be not only an Austin Center, it's gonna be a virtual community as well, so people will have the opportunity to, to be a part of it no matter where they live.
Speaker 0 00:54:34 Well, very cool. Dan, your work is amazing. You are such a gift to the world and I'm really thankful to you for lots of things, but especially for this hour of your time today.
Speaker 2 00:54:45 Yeah, thank you so much, Sherry. Likewise. Thank you for all the amazing work you're doing in the world. Please do keep it up and I look forward to our next conversation.
Speaker 0 00:54:55 Thanks for listening. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode of the podcast. In the meantime, feel free to check out zen founder.com for lots of resources about the kinds of conversations that we have on the podcast. You can get information about working with me about maybe joining a zen tribe. It's sort of like a mental health bootcamp for entrepreneurs. We also have lots of content on our blog, links to resources in our courses and books for sales. So check us out there and we hope to provide anything and everything that you might need to make the entrepreneurial life a little bit easier.
